Come along as we head to Las Vegas and breakdown some of the undercard as well as all of the main card bouts for Zuffa’s latest 2013 PPV offering. All betting lines courtesy of BestFightOdds, as usual.

Melancon makes his UFC debut as the +250 underdog after a 1-1 record in Strikeforce against a -300 Seth Baczynski. “The Polish Pistola,” who is built like a middleweight, will enjoy a 7 inch height advantage and should be able to keep the fight standing to compliment his striking advantage in this bout. Melancon has yet to be finished and fight goes the distance at -195 is a fairly safe prop option for a single bet. Baczynski makes the parlay.

Looks like someone got a call from their boss. Former Strikeforce fighter Tim Kennedy is set to make his UFC debut July 6th against Roger Gracie but made news yesterday for an interview he recently gave in which he criticized UFC fighter pay.

“It’s a good thing I have another job because the UFC doesn’t pay very well,” he told GrappleTalk Podcast.

“Anybody who accepts [fighters being underpaid] as a reality of the sport is sad and pathetic,” Kennedy went on. “I hope this isn’t the reality of the sport. If it is I should probably go do something else, like empty trash cans. I’d make more money than I do now.”

It didn’t take the middleweight long to regret his words, however, and he issued an apology to UFC brass for the interview through his facebook fan page yesterday. “I recently made comments regarding fighter pay. The intent of these statements was to highlight that professional fighters incur significant expense associated with their preparations to fight and that fighter compensation is still not on par with other major sports,” Kennedy began.

The UFC Middleweight division has long been ruled by the most feared and successful striker in MMA history, champion Anderson Silva. And perhaps more so than in smaller divisions, striking has been a good predictor of success at Middleweight. So examining this division in core striking performance metrics should provide good insight to how fighters will fare against each other in standup. A full explanation of the chart and variables is included at the end of this post.

But first, let’s see how the whole division stacks up against each other, and look at the winners and losers.

The Winners

Sniper Award: Two fights into his UFC career, cross-trained Dutchman Michael Kuiper has landed 49% of his power head strikes. We’ll see if he can maintain this in his upcoming matchup with veteran brawler Tom Lawlor in Sweden. Honorable mention must be given to Anderson Silva who has maintained 40% accuracy over his lengthy and dominant career. And also noteworthy is Italian boxer, Alessio Sakara, currently on the bench for health reasons.

Energizer Bunny Award: Strikeforce veteran Roger Gracie has been almost doubling the striking output of opponents on his way to a string of submission wins in typical Gracie fashion. Some grapplers use strikes to set up their mat-work, others don’t. Honorable mentions go to former champ Rich Franklin, and Strikeforce champ and crossover contender Luke Rockhold, who each tend to outpace their opponents by over 80%.

Biggest Ball(s) Award: The UFC record holder for knockdowns is Anderson Silva. He is literally the best in the business at dropping dudes. Statistically, when Silva lands a power head strike, there’s a 27% chance it will result in a knockdown, which is just ridiculous. These skills have won him Knockout of the Night honors seven times in the UFC.

As we reported yesterday, Jorge Gurgel’s claim that the fighters who came up short at Strikeforce: Marquardt vs. Saffiedine would find themselves out of a UFC contract was not exactly truthful. KJ Noons, Kurt Holobaugh, and Anthony Smith, for example, all suffered defeats at the event and were ironically the first names to be mentioned in the Strikeforce/UFC…migration, I guess?

On last night’s edition of UFC Tonight, the full list of Strikeforce fighters who would be making the transition to the big leagues was announced, and suffice it to say, there were a couple rather puzzling omissions and inclusions. After the jump is that full list, along with our thoughts on who some of these gentlemen should face in their UFC debuts.

If our past few posts are any indication, it doesn’t really matter what the subject of this article is, because you Taters will inevitably turn the comment section into a discussion on a feller who goes by dipsetkilla, whether he fucked your mom or not, and how gay you would be based on whether he fucked your mom or not. Personally, I think we should have dipset and bootystar (remember him?) engage in a winner-takes-all battle of incoherent superiority. Then again, dipset is probably hitching up his trousers and throwing a five dollar bill on my mother’s nightstand as we speak, so clearly I have a dog in this fight. Maybe I just miss bootystar and such whimsical gems as: “I bet the gladiator got asked cuz he was caught starring at the pork barrel sausage in the littereen next to his bald headed one yed jack of pades” but I digress.

It’s a shame that Strikeforce is getting the Bamboo Lounge treatment, but after the entertaining main card that those of us who watched were treated to, at least the promotion is fading into obscurity with dignity.

Strikeforce Middleweight Champion Luke Rockhold earned a convincing unanimous decision over the formidable Tim Kennedy. He came forward with an aggressive striking attack throughout the fight, managing to stuff numerous takedown attempts as well. Granted, Kennedy never seemed like he was in danger of being knocked out or submitted, but that’s far more of a testament to how game Kennedy is than it is a criticism of Luke Rockhold.

(Luckily, Scott Coker was there to break the tension with one of his trademark sauerkraut farts. I’m sorry, I usually don’t go that lowbrow, but nobody’s reading this, right? / Props: Esther Lin/Showtime)

(And for my next trick, I will enter a state of comatose using only a roided man’s fists and sheer determination.)

On the heels of a devastating one-punch knockout at the hands of Muhammed Lawal in September, it looks like Roger Gracie will make his moderately-anticipated middleweight debut at an upcoming Strikeforce event in July. Rejoice. Across the cage from the Jiu-Jitsu phenom will be none other than UFC veteran and member of the undead army, Keith “The Dean of Mean” Johnson Jardine. Jardine has had a rough run of things as of late, dropping six of his last nine including a recent ill-fated title bid against Luke Rockhold in January.

But a matchup with Gracie is one that Jardine stands a better chance of winning than any fight in recent memory, believe it or not. Jardine has never been submitted in professional competition, and Gracie’s complete lack of the kind of striking game that has felled Jardine in the past might just make for a victory over a big name that has eluded “The Dean” since his UFC 89 split-decision win over Brandon Vera. In fact, the closest Jardine has even come to scoring an upset victory in recent years was his Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley performance that saw him fight to a majority draw with the heavily favored Gegard Mousasi.

Though it was previously reported that Gracie was on his way up to the UFC, those rumors were quickly squashed by UFC President Dana White, who stated, “[expletive] that [expletive] you [expletive] [expletive] Samuel L. Jackson [expletive] smartphone [expletive] hotspacho [expletive].” Something like that. *